MOMMY

Daughter's return offers new comparisons

Daughter's return offers new comparisons

June 10, 2007

She knows she's due to come home, we joke, because the final bit of polish has chipped away on her big toe. She hasn't had a pedicure since her last visit. It's summer vacation, but we no longer have her for the summer. She no longer has vacation. She wedges in a visit during the sliver of space between classes and an internship. There's a pause in her frantic pace, leaving her time to come home. Time, even, to re-do her nails. My daughter is heading toward her senior year, and she senses the approach keenly. The real world is lapping at the shore, rising higher, and threatening to dampen the easy spirit of her undergraduate years. “I'm going to graduate next year,” she announces, as though the date had not been set until this very moment. My husband and I expected it, but our 21-year-old is nonetheless surprised. “What am I going to do?” she asks, speaking to us but expecting the answer from herself. Since she started college, she has been trying on possible futures to see how they fit. She has sampled various options in small, Tapas-sized portions. She hasn't settled on one yet for her life's main course. Meantime, she's happy to head home to her family and her twin-size bed and an open- door policy in the kitchen. Suddenly, her stuff is everywhere: her purse on the kitchen counter, her jacket on the chair, and her slippers at the front door. Her possessions trail in her wake like the scent of perfume in the breeze. She's even willing to go with me to the grocery store. “Why is it that when I'm a total mess, I always see someone I know from high school?” she fumes after one such random encounter between the frozen foods and the produce. I cannot explain, but I know it's true. “Let's walk,” she tells me, early in the morning before the sun can bake us. “Let's walk,” she tells me, late in the afternoon as the winds cool the air. And so, we walk. Her legs are longer than mine; my arms swing faster than hers. We pass the elementary school, whose students seem impossibly young. Was she ever that young? “I tried to be an understanding mother,” I tell her in passing. “You didn't understand enough,” she answers back. We puff and I change the subject. She tells me about her life away from home; I tell her about the latest in the neighborhood. I try my hardest to keep up with her life, memorizing the details the way she crams for a test. My daughter brings home all the expertise of her psychology major. Forthrightly, she analyzes our family, our relationships and our behavior. She strips off sentimentality like old varnish on a table. We puff. We compare the size of our hips, the depth of our friendships - her future, my past. “You need to get a dog who really loves you,” she advises. We breathe in deep as we round each bend. We center ourselves on the view and push ourselves to complete just one more circuit. And so we walk: mother and daughter, trying our hardest to match our strides. Teryl Zarnow writes about families for the Orange County Register and is the mother of three children, two boys and a girl. Write to her at The Orange County Register, P.O. Box 11626, Santa Ana, CA 92711. Or e-mail her at familywriter@aol.com.